Nelson paedophile fled into crime scene

A ‘HIGH-risk’ Nelson paedophile ended up being arrested on suspicion of murder when he tried to run away from a girl’s father and leapt over a wall straight in a crime scene.

Burnley Crown Court heard that Alan Cox, 47, a convicted child sex offender still on licence, was banned from contact with girls under 16 under an indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order (SOPO).

He had abandoned his car and made off after he dropped his trousers in front of two teenagers in Colne, and one went and told her father.

Cox was detained by police after he turned up behaving bizarrely at a nearby railway line where someone had committed suicide by jumping from Primet Railway Bridge.

The defendant, who had earlier walked uninvited into a neighbour’s house with an armful of teddy bears, was taken to the police station.

He was put in a cell in a paper suit and ‘spent the majority of the time’ naked and repeatedly performing a sex act on himself, despite being watched by CCTV.

Cox, originally from New Zealand, was said by a psychiatrist to have struck while in a temporary, drug-induced psychotic state caused by legal highs.

The divorced father-of-three told the court he had no recollection of the offences, but claimed it was ‘highly improbable’ they happened, as he was a ‘latent homosexual’.

He added: “I am not interested in women.”

The defendant, of Tavistock Street, had earlier admitted breaching the SOPO, exposure and possessing an indecent photo of a child. He was jailed for two years.

Cox, already on the Sex Offenders Register for life, was ordered to sign it for seven years. The SOPO continues and he will be banned from working with children.

Robert Elias, prosecuting, said the defendant drove past the girls three times in his BMW. He stopped and went running towards the pair, shouting: “My pants are falling down.”

He let go of his trousers and they fell around his knees. He had some wire in his hand. Mr Elias said that when the defendant was questioned, he said he had run away from a police road block and had been sprinting for his life, his trousers fell down and he pulled them back up.

He told officers he had taken NRG3, a legal high, bought from the internet and it had made him paranoid.

The defendant, who was not legally represented, told the court: “I find the charges highly improbable and certainly implausible and it would appear there is a miscarriage of justice about to take place. I have no defence. I have no memory.

“The only defence I have is, I was bi-polar and having an episode at the time.”

Sentencing, Judge Jonathan Gibson said it was disturbing that the defendant had had some wire with him.